A few Fort Dodge residents fed up with what they described as constant late night rowdiness and even gunfire around the Fourth Street Depot asked the City Council on Monday to take a hard look at the establishment.

“We believe this meets the criteria of a public nuisance,” said Emily Jensen, who lives with her family at 230 S. Fourth St., next to the bar.

She told the council that they have to contend with late night shouting, fighting, general drunken behavior and people urinating, defecating and vomiting in their yard. She said there has also been gunfire, most recently on Feb. 15.

Jensen told the council members that they don’t know what it’s like to “wake up to gunshots and run from room to room to make sure your kids are alive.”

Her husband Dan Jensen and neighbor Julie McKee also complained to the council about the customers of the bar.

“It’s just progressively gotten worse,” McKee said. “I just feel that it has become out of control.”

Bar owner Rick Thompson told the council he has “done everything to comply.”

“We go the extra effort to do everything we can,” he said. “We can’t control the streets.”

Emily Jensen asked the city officials to do a review of the bar’s operating procedures and conduct a “careful scrutiny” the next time its liquor license comes up for renewal.

None of the council members commented on the residents’ complaints.

Monday evening was not the first time the Fourth Street Depot has come to the attention of the City Council. In 2016, the council imposed rules on the horseshoe pitching competitions at the bar in response to complaints from neighbors.

In 2023, the city’s Board of Adjustment ruled that serving drinks and food on the patio was a violation of city zoning law.

The Police Department has been called to the bar for everything from parking complaints to fights. Perhaps the most serious incident in recent years was a July 2024 attack in which a man pistol whipped another man in the bar.